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Friday, March 20, 2015

I’m
excited to show everyone my new cover for Magick Charm! This book was
originally released about four years ago, and the rights have recently been returned
to me. I’ve been working hard at polishing up this second edition, and I’m
proud to be self-publishing it on April 1.

While
I loved the original cover, I wanted a new look and something that will have
continuity with the upcoming covers in this series. Luckily, I have a close
friend, Samantha Harvey, who’s also a graphic design whiz, and I asked her for
help. I absolutely love what she came up with and I’m sure you will too!

We
discovered two fantastic images on Flickr that were combined into the final
cover photo. Bourbon Street at night was taken by Sara Kelly and the twin
lightning bolts picture was taken by Broderick Delaney. You can find the links
to their work and their pages below.

If
you’re looking for a cover design artist or website designer, please don’t
hesitate to reach out to Samantha Harvey at contact[at]13magickalmoons.com. I’m
looking forward to seeing what she comes up with for my upcoming titles Gypsy
Magick and Free Spirit!

Saturday, March 14, 2015

I’ve
been inspired by events over the last few days to write this blog post. I’m
sure that most of my readers have no idea what set of circumstances I’m specifically
talking about, and I apologize, but I’m not going to entirely fill you in. I
feel that the situation has gone quite far enough and there’s enough fuel on
this particular fire. And I’m not going to even touch the particular topics
people are upset about; people have differences of opinion and different views,
and sometimes I might even agree with their general stance or point. What I
don’t agree with is how some authors and their fans are conducting themselves,
and that is what I’m talking about today.

Let
me give you some idea of what I’m discussing today in broad terms. Some of
these examples are things that have happened this week, but some of them are
things I’ve seen over the years I’ve been in the publishing business.

Some
of the things I’m upset about have to do with basic politeness that some people
seem to think, because of the distance and/or anonymity of the internet, they
can do away with. When authors have differences of opinion, I have seen instances
of name-calling, bullying, and encouraging their followers to do the same. This
is especially egregious when very popular authors do it since they have loads
of attention, sway, and followers. The fallout can be downright wicked in that
case.

Ironically,
some of the people out there yelling that a particular author is being a bully
turn around and become even bigger bullies in response. Here’s the thing - when
I was tormented in high school by a certain nasty young lady and her posse of
losers, I eventually had enough, chewed her out, and told her to back off. After
that, it was pretty much over and we ignored each other. What I didn’t do was
then summon all of my friends to harass her. I didn’t go down to where she
worked and tell them that I didn’t like how she behaved outside of work hours
and they should fire her. If I had, who would have been the bully then?

Disagreeing by attacking someone's livelihood
is a cheap way to win an argument. **

Here’s
the thing I am most unhappy about, when authors attack the livelihood of other
authors. Let me explain – some authors fight by going onto review sites and
giving their rival’s books one star, leaving reviews like “absolutely horrible”
or “worst book I ever read,” even though they’ve never read it. This is a cheap
way of trying to make your point. It’s hard enough to make a living as a writer
without being attacked unfairly.

Let’s
face it, people aren’t going to agree all the time, and sometimes you are going
to absolutely hate something someone else has to say, but is attacking their
livelihood really the correct response? And before you say, “well it depends on
what is said,” would you feel the same if someone did it to you? The most
polite and reasonable person in the world has undoubtedly at some point said something they
regretted, was misunderstood, or was just plain disagreed with.

There’s
one more point I’d like to reiterate. It’s tough out there in the publishing
world, especially among the Indie authors. What would happen if we just ignored
bad behavior instead of drawing battle lines? Or if we supported each other
instead of tearing each other down? That is the kind of community I’d like to
be a part of, and I hope more authors feel the same.

Monday, March 9, 2015

What is this formatting thing I hear of? I recall it happened after I finished my last edits with my publisher. It went to someone who did some magical stuff to it in their computer and then all the Kindles and Nooks and iThings were happy to download it.Now that I’m stepping out on my own, I become the someone who does magical stuff to my document. If only I had some clue of what I’m supposed to be doing!That was my thought last month. I practically begged a friend of mine to figure it out and do it for me, and because she loves me, she agreed. But I decided if I can learn to do it myself, that would make things easier for future books. Plus, she has an eleven-week-old, so I’m pretty sure she’s got her hands full already! ☺This is what I’ve learned so far. Formatting basically translates your Word document (or whatever program you use) into the different languages each e-book reader uses. No, I don’t know why they don’t all use the same one, though that would make sense to me. This is probably why I’m not a computer person.In addition to the translation, you also have to take into account the margins, copyright page, fonts, tabs… basically how everything looks and make sure it’s all consistent.

How does the book get from my word processing program to your Kindle?(Image from Amazon)

I was dreading doing this sort of thing by hand. So it was like kismet when I heard of a formatting program that was being recommended at around this time. Not to sound like an ad, but it’s called Jutoh, it cost $39, and it does all the formatting into all the different e-reader types.About a week ago, I started working with it, and after a few false starts, I managed to get something that looks like… a book! I’m pretty happy with it. So now I will do yet another read-through to spot any remaining typos, any odd characters, or anything that didn’t translate quite right, that sort of thing. But it’s coming along, and I feel all publisher-y and almost like I know what I’m doing.

Monday, March 2, 2015

I promised a work update, so here it is.In late January, I received an email from my publisher stating that all of their authors were being released from their contracts. What does that mean? Well, three main things, at least as it pertains to me. One, my books will be going out of print. Two, the rights to those books will return to me. That basically means that what happens to those stories is completely in my hands now.And that leads to the third thing. I will be self-publishing those books as well as their related, previously unpublished, sequels in the upcoming months.Right now, I’m doing my best to learn about self-publishing. I’m finding there’s a lot more to it than I ever dreamed. I’ll try to write up a few behind-the-scenes posts as I go along so you can see what I mean.My current goal is to have Magick Charm published again on April 1. After that, I’ll be working on getting Practically Dreaming back for sale. I’ve been asked about sequels to MC, and they’re coming, I promise! I’ve got a novella on the way as well as at least two more novels in that series. Likely, I’ll also be writing a novella as a sequel to PD, but that’ll be a little ways farther down the road.If you are on Facebook, please come and “like” my new, improved author page!